


Jack Wynand Had A Farm, E-I-E-I-O

by conceptofzero



Category: BioShock
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-14
Updated: 2014-04-14
Packaged: 2018-01-19 08:06:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1461949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/conceptofzero/pseuds/conceptofzero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And on that farm he had twenty one children, E-I-E-I-O</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Hilda finds the puppy in the ditch while they’re all out walking. The girls have gotten better since they first came out, less afraid of the vast open skies above them, but getting them out of the farmhouse can be a struggle. Jack doesn’t like to admit it, but the same goes for him. He’s got memories in his head telling him he grew up under wide open skies, but his body knows better and like the girls, he’d rather stay inside. 

Tenenbaum’s the one who forces them out, partly for their own good but mostly for hers. “Jack, I love them dearly, but they will drive me mad. Walk the fence with them.” Her accent is less thick than before but she still hasn’t shaken it and her instructions tell him to walk das fence. “Give me an hour without noise.” 

So they walk the perimeter of the farm each night after supper, Jack and twenty-one little girls following him like a gander leading a gaggle of goslings. They aren’t loud, not for children, but they still speak and mutter to one another. Jack pays them half a mind, the rest fixed on looking for breaks in the fence or gopher holes or any number of issues. 

He doesn’t notice Hilda break away, but he does go still when he hears the puppy whine in pain. Jack may be missing memories of his real childhood, but he still remembers the way the puppy yippied on the audio diary, that terrified sound the moment before the crunch of bones. His hands tremble and it’s good his veins have no EVE left in them or they would be lighting up now, summoning flames or ice or something. 

“Papa Jack, look.” Hilda holds up the sack. He can see a small brown dog’s foot sticking out, pawing at the hole. It whines louder. 

“Careful.” He approaches them and kneels down, taking the sack from Hilda. He opens it up and finds a horror show. There are six puppies inside, all dead except for one. He knows in an instant what happened: someone threw them out of the truck on the side of the road, maybe hoping they’d drown in the ditch. 

The live one struggles and Jack’s afraid to touch it, the scream of some other dog still in his head. He rips the bag open instead, getting its paw out, and lets Hilda scoop it up. Jack bites his lip, about to tell her to be careful with it, but he doesn’t need to. Hilda’s a gentle girl when dealing with anything other than a corpse, and she cradles the small dog in her arms. He’s a mongrel of some kind. Part beagle and part who knows what, with brown and white spots. The other girls crowd in, touching him carefully and stroking his fur. 

“Papa Jack, is it going to live?” Etta asks, her eyes fixed not on the live dog but on the bag with the others. 

“Don’t know. We’ll ask mama.” He makes himself pick up the sack of dead puppies. It’s easier carrying those. Jack doesn’t have to worry about doing any more damage to them. “Back to the house.” 

The girls flare out in front of him on the way back, all concerned with the puppy. Only Etta walks beside Jack instead, taking his free hand and holding on tight to it. She’s a good girl, quiet, doesn’t ask for much. Jack leans down and lifts her up, carrying her in the crook of his arm. He gives her a little squeeze to let her know she can talk, if she wants to. 

Etta puts her head on his shoulder. “We had a cat when I was little.” She says. That’s all she says. Jack doesn’t remember seeing any living animals down there in Rapture, but he does remember a lot of dead cats everywhere. Maybe one of them was Etta’s. 

Jack just holds her and lets Etta ride high. The sack full of puppies is heavier than she is, and he holds those slightly behind his back. He’ll bury them later, once the girls are in bed, put a stone over them so he knows where they are. Jack doesn’t know what happened to the dog in Rapture, but at least he’ll know these ones got a decent burial.


	2. Chapter 2

Twenty-one little girls perch on the side of the fence, watching Jack with the sort of intense look he’s used to seeing them give corpses. He tries to remember who he had helping him last time. It’s hard being fair to this many children sometimes - it’s easy to have someone slip through the cracks if they’re too quiet or don’t speak up when they’re being forgotten. 

Last time, it was Marsha and Muriel, and before that it was Susie and Becca and before that… Mary and Mary. “Luella, Abby, come here.” 

The two girls exchange looks and scamper over the fence, quickly coming to join him. He can hear some of the others whine a little with disappointment, and he makes a promise to himself to do something with them later, something for everyone. 

“Here, Luella, hold this. This is for you Abby.” He hands Luella the elastrator and the container of rubber bands, and to Abby, he hands the bottles and needles. They both hold onto them carefully. He supposes he probably shouldn’t give the girls needles, but it’s not as if they haven’t handled them before. Rapture forced them to do a lot of things other little girls didn’t have to learn how to do. 

Jack heads into the field and they trot after him. In his heavy chore boots and spring jacket, he feels like he did on the Proving Grounds. There are no splicers here, just cows that graze and eye them warily as they approach the herd. More than a few move out of the way, while some lower their heads and dare Jack to come closer to them. He motions for the girls to always stay on the other side of him and the cows and they do as they’re told. 

The new bull-calf tries to stand and run when they approach, but Jack’s fast - faster than most will ever be - and he quickly gets an arm around it, pushing the hundred-pound baby back to the ground. It bawls and he keeps an eye out for the mother as she comes up, concerned and anxious and a little angry. 

“No! No no no!” Abby yells and Luella clutches the elastrator closer, trying to have a stare-down with something bigger than either of them. “Go away!”

“Abby, fill up the needle to the 60 mark,” He tells her. Jack rolls the calf over and puts a knee on his chest, holding him in place. His hand goes out, seeking out the calf’s testicles and getting them ready. His other hand reaches out to Luelle. “Load that please.”

Luella looks nervously at the calf but does her job, opening the container and fishing out a rubber band, slowly working it over the prongs of the elastrator. From the fence, nineteen girls watch closely as Jack takes the elastrator from Luelle and spreads it open, until the rubber band’s big enough to be slid over the calf’s testicles. It’s quick, less than a minute’s worth of work, and just like that, the bull-calf is now a steer. Quick, painless, and Jack can’t help but think that his dad would be proud, before remembering that man wasn’t real. His biological father made it clear that he thought Jack was his greatest disappointment. 

Abby holds out the needle, full of antibiotics that should hopefully keep this steer alive and healthy through the worst of spring. “Hurry papa, she’s mad.” 

The cow wasn’t that mad, though she was still upset. Her nose hovers near Jack’s back, sniffing loudly and all but nudging him. She’s making low angry sounds but she isn’t about to charge. Jack hands the elastrator back to Luelle and takes the needle, choosing a spot on the calf’s hindquarters and making his injection. That needle prick gets more of a reaction than the rubber band did and the calf bawls, causing the cows around to do the same. 

Jack takes his knee off the calf and it bolts upright, retreating to his mother’s side. The girls cluster around him and Jack picks them up, one in each arm. The cows make it clear he’s not welcome and Jack doesn’t push it any further. 

“Is he going to be okay?” Luella asks, looking back at the steer. That’s good. A year ago, she wouldn’t have cared. Now she’s starting to empathize with animals again. They’re all getting better, some faster than others. 

“He’ll be fine now that he has his medicine.” Jack assures her. When they reach the fence, he helps them over first before joining them. The wooden fence creaks a little under his weight. He’ll have to come out here tomorrow and make sure everything’s holding. If not, he’ll get some more nails from town, and a book on fixing fences. He knows how to do it, but sometimes he finds himself second-guessing if this is something he really understands, or if what he knows is as fake as what he remembers. 

Twenty-one girls fall into a line behind Jack, chattering and fighting with one another. It’s almost a relief to hear them so loud after so much time was spent being silent.


	3. Chapter 3

Jack doesn’t sleep much, but he’s never needed much sleep either. He tends to be up half the night in case the girls wake up. When they first got back to America, he usually slept in the late morning hours because the girls barely ever made it through the night without nightmares or accidents. He’d had to put up a few extra clotheslines to make room for all the sheets that needed to be laundered on a daily basis. 

But the bedwetting had died down as things got better and they got older, and the nightmares didn’t affect all of them, only one or two who would wake up crying or come looking for Jack to be reassured that there were no splicers waiting in the shadows. Now, Jack’s usually up only twice a night, helping guide one of the girls through the dark house to the washroom or downstairs for a glass of water and a secret late night snack.

Jack tries hard not to favour any of the girls over the others, but if there’s one who gets a little more attention than most, it’s Belva. She never sleeps through the night and when he does his late night check of the girls, she’s always sitting up in bed, waiting for him to allow her to climb out of bed and follow him through the house. Jack knows he should probably say no and make her stay there until she stops waking in the middle of the night. 

But every night, he lets Belva follow him out of her room and stay with him until she falls asleep on her own. She’s a quiet kid, worryingly quiet if he’s honest, never underfoot no matter what he’s doing. Jack can be reading veterinarian texts or working on the tractor in the front yard or even just listening to the radio, and she’ll patiently sit nearby through all of it. 

He’s so used to silence from her that it startles Jack a little when she chooses tonight of all nights to speak up. Jack’s calculating how many hay bales they’ll have to buy to get them through winter when Belva slides off her chair and walks over to him, tugging on his sleeve. “Papa Jack? Are we ever going home?” 

“Home? To Rapture?” It wouldn’t be the first time one of the girls had wondered that. Rapture was all some of them had known. They didn’t want to be Little Sisters, but they wanted to go back to the apartments they’d known with their parents. Most had grown out of that sort of thinking as time passed and they began to understand that the Rapture they had known no longer existed and never would again. 

Belva shakes her head no. “Home, papa. Real home. Where my real mama is. She went home when I was little. Daddy said she went to the surface.” She fiddles with his sleeve, clutching at the fabric tightly as she tries to get her words out. “Where I was born, papa Jack.” 

Jack sighs a little as he understands what she's really asking him. He slides his chair back and picks up Belva, setting her in his lap. Her mother is likely dead. Maybe it was easier for her father to say she went home than to say she died. Or maybe she did go home… though from what Tenenbaum’s said, she’s certain that Jack’s one of the only people who ever left Rapture, and that required the sort of power and money Frank Fontaine had at his disposal. Belva’s parents were likely part of the underclass that Frank had turned into his foot soldiers. 

“No, I’m sorry Belva. We don’t know where your real home is.” He says it as kindly as he can, though he knows it’s an ugly truth. Jack won’t lie to the girls though. He refuses to do that to them. His life was made of lies that have left him feeling like a man wading through quicksand, finding false bottoms with every step he takes. “Do you remember anything about home? A town name… your mother’s name?” 

He doesn’t expect her to know. Most of the girls don't remember too much about their lives before. They’re all so young. The oldest might be eight, and she’s very small for an eight year old. Half of them don’t even know their own birthdays and none except for three know the year they were born. Some of them spent nearly two years collecting ADAM, doing nothing but sleeping and puking and crawling through vents. It’s a wonder they remembered their own names by the end of those days. 

Belva sits in his lap thinking. The moment she realizes she doesn’t remember anything, her face crumples and her eyes well up. She’s a quiet crier, her shoulders shaking while tears roll down her cheeks. Jack just holds her, rubbing her back and trying to comfort her as best as he can. “I’m sorry Belva.” 

She cries for the better part of half an hour before exhaustion hits her. Belva falls asleep on his chest, her shoulders slumping. She’s still crying a little in her sleep as he carries her to her bed and tucks her in. Tomorrow, he’ll ask Tenenbaum if there’s any chance there might be records they can look through. Maybe if they look for people who disappeared with children during those years Rapture was running, maybe they could find an answer there. 

But he’s still got to figure out what they need to buy for the winter, and then how much money they need to make to cover that and to keep the girls fed and clothed. Jack tucks Belva in and dries her face, hoping a little that tomorrow’s a better day for her.


	4. Chapter 4

One of the girls throws up in the middle of the night. Jack’s moving as soon as he hears the sound, abandoning his current attempt at carpentry without a second thought. Tenenbaum looks up from her work, a frown quickly slipping across his features. She asks, “What is it?”

“Someone’s puking.” Jack heads up the stairs quickly, hoping to catch whoever’s doing it in the act. It’s been months since they last heard that sound, and they’d spent weeks keeping an eye on Penny, trying to catch her in the act. Most of the girls started eating properly within a month of going to the surface, but some had taken longer to break the cycle of eating and then throwing it up. The girls didn’t feel the physical urges anymore, but the conditioning took a painfully long time to break. It had been harder for some of them, and harder still for Jack and Tenenbaum to watch them slowly fade away as they failed to keep anything down. 

But they’d done it, and he hadn’t had to enforce the rule against locking the bathroom door for a very long time. Jack tries the doorknob when he reaches the washroom, half afraid that he’ll have to bust down the door. It opens smoothly when he turns it, and as he steps inside, he realizes that this isn’t the conditioning resurfacing.

Nannie is kneeling on the floor, drenched in sweat and shaking. She looks miserable and paler than usual. “Daddy.” The way her voice trembles is worrying, but it’s the name she uses that frightens him. Nannie has never called him daddy before. He’s not sure she’s even talking to him, not with the way her eyes glossily look through him. “Daddy, I don’t feel good.” 

Tenenbaum joins Jack in the doorway and he steps aside, making room for her. If what he sees has him frightened, it has Tenenbaum terrified. “Scheisse! Jack, grab her, quickly, take her to my room.” 

He doesn’t hesitate. Jack heads in and scoops Nannie up. She’s drenched and he wraps her in a towel, touching her forehead briefly. The little girl’s burning up with a fever and she feels lighter than before. He carries her to Tenenbaum’s room, moving quickly and silently as not to wake the other girls. They’re strong and smart but they’ll panic if they see Nannie right now. 

Tenenbaum is sorting through her possessions, waving vaguely towards the bed. Jack’s never been in her room before. It just seemed rude to come in. After all, it’s the only private space she has here. The room’s very plain and tidy, more like a guest room and less like a home. She’s got a suitcase open, digging through it to find something. 

Jack lies Nannie on the bed, turning her on her side in case she throws up again. She’s awake but it’s hard to tell how alert she is when her eyes don’t seem to be focusing on anything. He kneels by the bed, glancing over at Tenenbaum. “Can I help?”

“What is her temperature? Quick, quick!” She finds what she’s looking for, a ragged looking notebook that she cracks open and quickly flips through. While Tenenbaum reads, Jack gets up and runs to the bathroom, grabbing the thermometer from the medicine cabinet before heading back.

Nannie doesn’t fight him at all as he slides it under her tongue, a bad sign if there ever was one. He counts down silently, popping it out and reading off the number. “103.” 

“Schweinhund.” She curses under her breath, muttering to herself. Tenenbaum pulls herself up, sitting on the bed and looking at Nannie’s eyes. She references the book again and snaps it shut. “We must keep her away from the other girls. I will strip her bedding, take her to the barn. She cannot be in the same house.” 

“How bad is it? Should we go to a hospital?” Jack asks, picking Nannie back up. The girl whimpers and curls against him. The nearest hospital that would be open at this time of night is an hour away. The local doctor is only half an hour away but Jack only vaguely knows him and he’s not sure how welcome they would be at this time of night.

“Nein, if this is not serious, it will pass. If it is serious, we cannot afford to take her to a hospital. We will know by morning. The last time-” She pauses and he can see the look in her eye. This has happened before. Tenenbaum knows something terrible that she’s not telling him. “Go, take her. I will be there soon. Go!” 

He goes. Jack wants answers but if Tenenbaum isn’t giving them, then there isn’t time for them. It’s cold out and he takes the blanket from Tenenbaum’s bed, wrapping Nannie up as he carries her out of the house. The night is dark and on the porch, Mr Bubbles stirs in his dog house, wuffing softly as Jack walks over the boards. 

There’s a flashlight just inside the barn door that Jack grabs, turning it on and letting the lamp light guide them. The tack room seems as good a place as any to set up and Jack settles them in there, sitting with Nannie in his lap. He's trying very hard not to panic because he knows it won’t do any good. Tenenbaum’s words hang in his mind. She said if it was serious, they couldn’t afford to go to the hospital. That means that if it’s serious, Nannie’s going to die. 

They’ve already talked about what to do if the worst comes to pass and one of the girls is killed. There would be too many questions if anyone knew. How could they possibly explain all the other girls? Jack’s paperwork is made up of good forgeries, the best money could buy, but even it has holes that can be found if you’re looking for them. If it comes to it, they’ll dig a hole out in the field and bury her as deep as they can. No stones, no names, nothing to mark her place, not while the others are too young to be sent out into the world to thrive on their own. 

Talking is one thing. Facing down a worse-case scenario is another. Jack just keeps Nannie wrapped up tight, doing his best to give her comfort as she sweats out the worst of what’s inside of her. 

Tenenbaum arrives after a few hours, carrying a box in her hands. She sets it outside the tack room, shoving it towards Jack but not coming close. “You will have to stay here until she is better, and until we are sure you do not have this. Give her the medicine and do not let her get too warm. When this is done, everything must be disposed of. We cannot let this near the other girls. Maybe this is regular flu, but… I will not take that chance, not again.” 

Again, she says, confirming this has happened before. He doesn’t have to ask what happened to make her so severe about this. Jack just nods. 

“I will bring food and leave it here. There is bedding. Not much but. Better than nothing.” She keeps her distance, nodding just the once to Jack. Her eyes stay on Nannie, severe and cold, as if trying her best to prepare herself for Nannie’s loss. 

It takes the better part of a week, but they leave with Nannie alert and able to walk on her own. Jack disinfects what can be disinfected and burns the rest. The girls watch the bonfire from a distance. Jack’s relieved for the most part, glad that nothing truly valuable was lost.

Still… he’ll miss that sweater a little. It was his favorite.


	5. Chapter 5

Jack heads into town to get farm supplies, some items for the girls, and food for the next few weeks. He comes home with all that, a baseball bat and balls, and two kittens that he let Sally and Trudy pick out. They’re still debating on the names when he pulls up to the farm house. 

“Remember, they’re barn cats.” He says. The girls barely notice, piling out of the truck and heading into the house to show the others. He shakes his head a little when they’re gone. Jack will be lucky if he can keep them outside even half the time. Mr Bubbles has his own doghouse but he sleeps in the house most days, and on the porch when he’s not allowed inside. 

The girls drift out to the truck one or two at a time, helping Jack by taking in food or whatever items they’ve asked him to get. Carolee takes her yarn and Leta takes her fabric, and Etta takes the baseball bat, heading out to the barn to practice with it. They’re getting big and he watches them walk out in the sunshine, unafraid of the vast sky above them. Rapture is a fading memory, and he’s glad that one day, Andrew Ryan’s name will mean nothing to these girls. 

“Papa, you want some lemonade?” Jane calls out from the porch and Jack nods. He could go for a glass. The girl scurries inside and while she mixes it up, he carries the rest of the supplies to the barn, working up a heavy sweat. 

He finds Jane on the porch when he comes back, along with Tenenbaum. She hands him a chilled glass, the outside sweating a little from the summer sun. Tenenbaum looks a little unimpressed with Jack. “You have interrupted today’s lesson.” 

“Sorry about that.” Jack says, sipping at the tart drink. It’s probably for the best anyway. The girls likely needed a break. Tenenbaum’s a good teacher but she pushes hard. She can be abrupt to the point of rudeness and her standards are high. On the other hand, she’s very good at explaining things and she knows how to keep the attention of twenty-one little girls. Jack usually uses the time she’s teaching them to run some errands or to catch up on his sleep if he’s running behind. Sometimes though, he sits at the back of the classroom and listens, just to be sure the things he thinks he knows are right. 

It’s not like the school days he remembers (not that those days are any more real than the rest of his memories). The girls aren’t expected to sit at desks. Some do, but most prefer to sit around the room on the floor or up on couches. Some girls take notes and others just listen. Carolee knits as she listens, churning out socks and sweaters and hats that everyone needs. Nancy can’t sit still and she paces at the back of the room, stopping only occasionally to ask Tenenbaum a question about the day’s lesson.

Jack teaches them too, though he leaves the academic things to Tenenbaum, trusting her grasp on science and math over his. He teaches the girls how to cook instead, how to fix an engine, how to hang a door and how to wire a new light into a room. Jack prefers to work with small groups, two or three at a time, so he doesn’t have to repeat himself so much or answer too many questions at once.

He sits on the porch, Jane sitting right beside him. Tenenbaum stays standing, leaning against the railing. Jack’s about to ask her to join them when Mr. Bubbles comes along and jumps right into Jack’s lap, trying to climb up on him. Jane finds this hilarious, giggling into her hands. “Papa look, he’s trying to kiss you!” 

Jack keeps his hands up and away from Mr. Bubbles, leaning back a little. The excitable animal licks his chin, his tail wagging hard and fast. Jack feels his insides tighten up a little with anxiety. Mr. Bubble’s shifts and one of his paws gives out, the dog slipping backwards. Jack doesn’t think, he just reacts, grabbing the dog and steadying him.

_Would you kindly break-_

Jack stops the thought. His hand stays still and steady on Mr. Bubble’s back. Mr. Bubbles continues to lick and wag and wiggle until Jane claps her hands and he leaps into her arms, choosing to give her kisses instead. She’s delighted and Jack’s heart pounds hard in his chest. 

“Papa!” That’s Carolee calling him. She raises up her latest creation - a sweater the same size as Jack. It’s a little rough but it’s sweater-shaped, which is a pretty big accomplishment for a little girl who only learned to tie her own shoes two months ago. “Try it on!” 

Jack sets his lemonade down and slips off his shirt, hanging it on the railing. He pulls the sweater on, though his head has a little trouble with the neck. That’s what he gets for having such a big skull he thinks. Still, it goes over in the end, his ears folding tight to his skull and popping up again. It’s not too badly fitting actually. “Thank you Carolee. How do I look?” 

“Very silly papa.” She raises her arms towards him and he picks Carolee up, giving her the hug she wants. “Do you like it?” 

“I do.” He gives her a squeeze. Mr. Bubbles barks a few times, scrambling out of Jane’s lap and rushing into the house. He’s going to come across those cats soon and Jack’s going to need to be there, just in case someone has to step in. His heart’s still beating a little fast and he knows that maybe he won’t ever be comfortable with touching a dog of any kind, even if the mental conditioning is long gone. But he also knows that’s okay. He doesn’t have to do anything he’s not ready or able to do. 

“You look ridiculous.” Tenenbaum says, lighting a cigarette. She brings it to her mouth and for a moment, she smiles at him. “Like a father should.” 

Jack laughs and smiles, ducking his head. His cheeks are red and he tries not to let it show how good it feels to have her call him that. Carolee just keeps her arms around his neck, hanging off of Jack a little. “Don’t take it off, I want you to wear it all day.”

“I can do that.” He leans down and picks up Jane in his other arm, getting them settled. Jack sneaks a look and a grin at Tenenbaum before carrying them into the house. “Let’s go find the kittens and Mr. Bubbles.” 

One day, the girls are going to leave. They won’t go all at once and some might stay far longer than the others, but Jack knows a day will come when he and Tenenbaum will be left alone on the farm. It’s as inevitable as the seasons. But that day’s not going to come for a long time. He’s got children to raise first and land to farm. 

Maybe he’s Andrew Ryan’s greatest disappointment, but what had Ryan known? Brigid Tenenbaum thinks he’s a good man. That’s good enough for Jack Wynand.


End file.
